The European Union should adopt “a broad, legally based approach” beyond current bans and investigations against risks posed by TikTok, Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission’s Executive Vice President, said, adding that the EU was considering an outbound investment screening mechanism that would target China, and that it would introduce a collective response to risks from Beijing’s malign use of technology. In February, the European Commission and the EU Council banned TikTok from staff phones, after the U.S. federal government and more than two dozen states prohibited government employees from using the app on official work devices. Canada, Belgium and Britain have taken similar actions. The EU has confirmed investigations into TikTok’s data transfer to China and its advertising aimed at children. “That is really not enough,” Vestager told an event at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington. She called for a “legally based approach”, saying that such efforts were imperative “as long as the same kind of data is for sale and China can buy it everywhere anyway”.
Her remarks came after TikTok launched “Project Clover” as its European counteroffensive to assuage politicians’ fears over Chinese surveillance. That plan to process European data in Ireland is similar to its “Project Texas”, which promised such controls to U.S. lawmakers in 2020. Members of a U.S. congressional committee peppered Tik Tok's CEO Chew Shou Zi with questions during a hearing on March 23, focusing on the app’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party, danger to teenagers, and risks to American national security and data privacy. Vestager reiterated the message that Brussels has no interest in decoupling from the world’s second largest economy, but rather needs to build a “de-risking” strategy to manage the relationship with Beijing. Reducing strategic dependencies on China is one of the most important components for doing so, she said. “If one was ever in doubt, look at how the dependency on Russian gas affected Europe,” she said. “We should only need to learn this once. Now we need to act upon it.”
Brussels has viewed Beijing as a “systemic rival” and “economic competitor”. Vestager said the two labels “come closer and closer together” since China shifts from focusing on economic growth to being much more ideological. This requires more strategy to take action, she said. “We need to have a European approach to this.” She said in light of the risks from China’s use of technology – including the integrity of data, disinformation and the protection of human rights – the EU would present a strategy in the next few months that will include “looking at outbound investment”. “But the thing is, it’s not enough to address the risk of autocracies when they use digital technologies,” she added, emphasizing more efforts on data protection – like those targeting TikTok – and big tech’s responsibility for the content and keeping the digital market open and contestable. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration said last week that it was considering the establishment of an outbound investment review board to counter “malign actors”, including China, the South China Morning Post reports.
